Discourse Analysis: study material, references

I have received online access to all material for Discourse Analysis (key theoretical, philosophical, and methodological debates), the Open University’s post-graduate course in the Social Sciences programme. It’s a 16 week course at 30 credit points and will be my second last course towards the MA degree, with 3 assignments to be submitted electronically and an exam in April 2010. All material has been provided right at the start of the course in PDFs. Below the links to the study material on Amazon (look inside feature) and material from previous years which vary only in terms of dates from the current presentation.

• Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S.J. (eds) (2001) Discourse Theory and
  Practice: A Reader. London: Sage in association with The Open University.
  Discourse Theory (Reader) on Amazon (search inside)
  This reader contains a collection of articles by Stuart Hall, Erving Goffman, Nikolas Rose et al.
• Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S.J. (eds) (2001) Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, London: Sage in association with The Open University.
  Discourse Data (Workbook) on Amazon (search inside)
• Study Guide (PDF, opens in new window) which outlines the learning outcomes and the teaching strategy
• Study Calendar of 2007, PDF opens in new window.

There is also a specimen exam paper delivered online but not made accessible to the public by the Open University, further a number of exam papers from previous years available on the OUSA Online Store for purchase. Moreover, preparation notes, a guide for submitting electronic assignments (time of submission will change in December from 12am to 12noon) and the assignment booklet itself.

Further required readings:

• Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. (1997) ‘Critical discourse analysis’ in van Dijk, Teun A. (ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction, vol. 2, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage, pp. 258–84.
• Locke, A. and Edwards, D. (2003) ‘Bill and Monica: memory, emotion and normativity in Clinton’s Grand Jury testimony’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 42, part 2, pp. 239–56.
• Pomerantz, A. and Fehr, B.J. (1997) ‘Conversation analysis: an approach to the study of social action as sense making practices’ in van Dijk, Teun A. (ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction,vol.2, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 64–91.
• Potter, J. (2005) ‘Making psychology relevant’, Discourse and Society, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 739–47.
• van Dijk, Teun A. (1992) ‘Discourse and the denial of racism’, Discourse and Society, vol. 3, no.1, pp. 87–118

Tackfilm Sweden features: You, the Hero

Staring in a Swedish film, takes less than 5 minutes and makes you look like a global hero in a professionally made short film. Tackfilm – tack means thank you in Swedish – is thanking Swedish citizens for paying their broadcasting fees. Subtitled and smart (upload your own pic, turn off sound and run the faster version if on slow connection) it’s a toy that can potentially teach more than clever marketing.

It conveys a sense of how easy it is making someone look pretty good – in this case it’s me who’s the hero: Tackfilm features Britta – in no less than 8 (!) appearances…stunning, almost convinced myself of being Sweden’s hero ;)

flickr’s seductive power

I have recently become a ‘flickr pro’ member and started using groups more meaningfully. It is a social networking site that taps into my unconscious, I feel. Frequently I am surprised to see my own connotations that spring up when presented with a new image uploaded by one of my contacts.

I love the daily flickr newsletter and those previews, the mix of them, 5 in a line maximum per contact, every day a visual treat. They trigger unknown associations in me. I click on the one that makes me most curious when I don’t have much time to explore all of them.

You never know, sometimes it’s light and shadows, details in the background, personal tags that add another layer of meaning, a comment by another viewer that is moving. It’s so intense the dynamic, like being pulled into a narrative that resembles a film. A few images tell a story but the story differs from what the person saw who took the shot which also differs from the real story. Interpretation of the interpretation.

Today, TooSix uploaded a simple neonsign saying Kreuzberg – the part in Berlin where I spent nearly 7 years – it made me do what expected least: a German poem-style memory unfolded, I typed without really thinking. I hadn’t been aware this was still living inside me. So fresh. Nothing’s ever lost. Nice. Grateful for the inspiration, thanks TooSix.

Gute alte Zeiten. Sehnsucht. Ratten. Strassenkehrer. Doner Kebap. Best in town. Politische Debatten nach 2 morgens. Ach.
Ein Neon Schild. Nicht mehr. Nicht weniger.

recruitment and graduate internet user skills

This week I overheard a discussion between a few financial professionals. They threw in their collective knowledge about sushi and Aberdeen, Scotland. Apparently there are no sushi bars in Aberdeen and those folks up in the very North East of our island are poor souls who have to travel down to London in order to get a bite of cold fish and rice. While they argued back and forth I googled it – turns out there are 7 sushi restaurants listed in Aberdeen. I had suspected no less but it left me puzzled that those folks with iPhones and internet access right in front of them rather resorted to making themselves look less than smart than simply checking it first and then telling others.

The same applies to recruitment processes I learned the other day. Understanding what sort of personality you are about to recruit is still based on relatively old-fashioned conversations, going through CV (resume, Lebenslauf) data, checking references – all a bit slow and ignorant of the possibilities we could harness. Senior executives in charge of making final decisions about recruitment of graduates still believe you need to sign up for Twitter in order to ‘read it’. There is a profound lack of skills in making use of the considerable amount of data many graduates provide on the net.

Accessible to anyone involved in the recruitment process and able to pull the strands together, it won’t need to be the images of drunk nights out on Facebook that are compromising. That might be the worst case scenario only. Someone briefing decision-makers would go and search for patterns in order to see whether the applicant may fit in beyond the bare facts and if so, to what degree. Questions that matter most when recruiting staff, which are not easily assessed in personal conversations, might be:

• What sort of moods does the applicant reveal? Stable? Erratic?
• What kind of friends or conversational partners does the applicant engage with? What’s the tone of these conversations? Any consumer forums or communities that show technical or social skills?
• Any skills that match the CV or are perhaps not even mentioned – check Youtube, Flickr etc.
• Does the applicant appear to ignore copyrights or infringe others’ rights?

Internet usage skills are complex and reveal a lot more about a person than many keep thinking. While typical assessment practices provide nothing more than a snapshot of an applicant on a day of all effort being made to look good, the internet research will provide a long-term profile that says a lot more about potential employees with regard to:

• team working including group blogging and
• feedback skills including taking in and learning from criticism
• broader communication skills and
• general networking, dealing with ’spam contacts’ as well as
• digital media ethics

That is potentially a lot more and a lot more of a holistic picture than we could ever be able to find out in conventional recruitment talks. Smart and skilled applicants will make sure they have privacy settings in place for personal conversations that will not be haunting them in these kind of situations. It’s a question of being in command of the social media you are using rather than being controlled by technology in non-desired ways. Employers and applicants – as well as old media – frequently seem to hold less differentiated views on this.

The very same applies to the applicant perspective, they are free – and should make use of it – to check their future employer and senior staff’s profiles. If there is no online identity searchable, not even a few hits that bring up names in relation to conferences or affiliations to professional bodies, this conveys an equally strong message.

After all, what we want, is making informed decisions. It’s not about sneaking into people’s personal lives and moralising about life styles as some may argue, rather, it is about finding suitable matches and making sure you won’t need to waste a few months in real [business] life together before the mismatch becomes all too evident.

In this sense, Eszter Hargittai’s ‘The Role of Expertise in Navigating Links of Influence’ is a great read. The essay is available as part of The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age (2008) by editors Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui.

challenges, passion – and Higher Education

Alone in walled cyberspace: I was working on a collaborative project today and made some interesting observations. The university forum was quiet, as so often now. We are six groups of 10 students each, each group works with an allocated associated lecturer. They could potentially get discussions going but debate has decreased to a degree where 3-5 students per week at best contribute, it’s rather monologues than debates. The current project is a group presentation based on notions of definition of professionalism, excellence, best practices and related illustrating material in educational contexts. It’s fairly straightforward and I have already selected my case studies, summarised the key points which I think justify calling them excellent and posted that. So I can concentrate on a paper due next week for the course on accessibility.

Wiki and Moodle: We use a Wiki within the Moodle environment. Even though Moodle is open source, the technology is rather hindering than facilitating efficient and enjoyable communication and collaboration. The course is 100% online, i.e. no printed material, no audio or video conferences. A huge minus, it means you don’t talk to any student or lecturer over the course of five months, you won’t see them if they opt for those object-centred avatars, the least personal thing anyone could possibly come up with.

Online collaboration: Based on these premises, the collaboration is mediocre, we try, of course, to hit the deadline, and produce something that will pass. But we depend on each other (which would be a lot more fascinating to study…) and what happened over the past few days was quite amusing. People were reminded to show up in the forum and collaborate on the project as this is a must-do activity – one of the many that are not mentioned in the course description when students sign up for splashing out a four-digit amount on this course just to end up being frustrated but end up not daring to express it.

Power and Panopticon: The forums could be linked together rather than running individual walled gardens where a group of no more than ten students watched by their lecturer makes for a spirit of a Foucauldian panopticon because lecturers neither engage in debates (other than ‘oh, that’s a good point’) nor do they share conference announcements, their own publications or anything that I think would be normal to do in an online course at post-graduate level. I found myself posting conference announcement until I noticed that all lecturers and course authors attend plenty of conferences but remain utterly shy when it comes to sharing. No papers, no ideas beyond the course content, no events. Make your own way if you want to be one of us.

Sharing practices 1.0: Now, people emailed the lecturer asking to get their email address distributed. The Open University does not support student contact lists we were told, which means you have to email the lecturer and ask them explicitly to email that to other students. Once they have done that students get an email with one email address of a fellow student addressed to an undisclosed recipient list. Now to me that is so web 1.0 and so control-freakish that I couldn’t help but post my email address straight into the course Wiki – which is, you guessed it, behind walls, password-secured, of course.

Dependent learners: I found the Wiki work so far not exactly inspiring, you get an impression there are students who throw into it whatever they can think of – or the opposite, nothing at all. We are asked to collaborate with regard to cleaning up etc but it feels a bit like reinventing the wheel – there are publicly accessible wikis in the net, so why not having a look and getting inspired? Oh, self-directed learning, critical and independent thinking and questioning minds, are we ready for them or shall we rather re-produce the well-tried docile bodies and minds that come in so handy in consumerist societies that just suffered a major blow to the unquestioning buy-now, let the next-generation-pay attitude? It’s so convenient to not being questioned, and to not engage with some of those tireless students who are such a nuisance…

The administrator-lecturer:The whole course would greatly benefit from more critical thinking, concerted action and a much less administrative attitude of lecturers who see their role obviously in copy and pasting individual snippets of the course guide following the pattern ‘activity 2.4 – please discuss…’. It’s all asynchronous and students tend to ramble away, everyone under considerable time pressure due to all those exercises that focus on rhetoric rather than substance. So far I have been missing theoretical frameworks that required a bit of work and dare I say it? Thinking, just thinking through ideas, not one single concept that was hard to grasp.

Inter-disciplinarity? No thanks: Boring, over-priced and somewhat hysteric with all its pieces of 300 or 500 words of reflective practice. This course does not allow us to reflect on the institutional agenda, the politics of academia or the self-centred assessment obsession we are presented with. Nor do lecturer or authors make any references to auto-ethnography, auto-biography or reflexivity. I was told, it’s another discipline and hence we won’t discuss it, so no chance to get the course anywhere near inter-disciplinary approaches or harness the power of collective student knowledge in academic crowd-sourcing style.

Off the record – student feedback: In 1:1 conversations behind other walled gardens I get to hear that this course is a ‘raw deal’, that the references we are presented with are predominantly freely accessible government reports, papers produced by academics who don’t work with the Open University or other material that has been licensed under a Creative Commons License and was intended for non-profit purposes – but who dares to cry wolf when they have spent a considerable amount of money on degree courses they try to do to get on with careers that are not exactly exciting? Clearly, it takes another kind of student to get a bit of protest than the ones the Open University usually attracts and manages well to keep as far apart as possible – networking outcomes are incredibly poor at the Open University, any conference or workshop will provide a better opportunity. In this way, though, any student rebels remain under control, I haven’t seen anything remotely resembling what I witnessed on a regular basis in Berlin’s universities – where students do have to pay at worst a minor fraction of what we are being charged here – but still seem to have fierce critical thinking for breakfast and never get tired pointing out what’s wrong with ‘the system’.

Not understanding social media practices: Technology, after all, is not a panacea. To me it seems, some academics discovered social media as cash-generating holy grail, so they came up with online courses that require students to do a lot of administrative work that course teams used to do in the past. Lecturers have started blogging, some of them explored the liberating effects of reflecting over compromising personal material they declare they don’t want to share in the student forums but you will find them on Google within a minute. Others don’t trust any applications which are freeware or shareware or anything that requires interaction between peers, no matter where you are in the hierarchies in real life. I feel like attempting to educate educators who lack experience in social media and think that a bit of blogging in pseudo-anonymous style and a few friends on facebook are all that’s to be known about social media. Elearning itself is so overrated and yet so misunderstood and under-harnessed in this course that I wonder what comes next. The exciting aspects of studies based on books and papers? The unquestioned technological determinism that has been creeping into the study material compiled by people who barely know anything about building networks and resolving conflicts or getting into such in social networks is shocking. What qualifies these people to teach us in this top-down manner (in particular as they request us to provide evidence even in cases when we argue we haven’t made any personal or professional progress)? Why should I be content with this after experiencing experts in the field sharing on Twitter and in blogs in a constant stream of enthusiasm? Why should I trust experts in online edcuation when they do not even have a sound online identity (or none at all)?

Before we hyped elearning: Non-online courses at the Open University were provided as heavy packs of audio, video and paper material (one of them delivered numerous interviews with Stuart Hall -perhaps I need to let the Open University know that these courses were the ones which educated me towards the demanding student I am nowadays, that was at half the fee I pay now and just 4 years ago). Now, this is gone, though. Whenever my internet connection is down, I am lost. The entire material is provided as html sites, lots of links, so please check them and if you intend to highlight or work with the material offline, happy copy and pasting. Whenever the student server is down, the same applies.

Harnessing the limitations: Over the past 11 weeks or so I have been through a number of angry moments, and I wasn’t shy in expressing my frustration. The aspect that infuriates me most is the lack of challenging course work, the total obsession with assessment and the massive lack of flexibility. This is new, in previous courses (under-graduate and post-graduate) the Open University provided enough room for personal planning around other commitments – after all that’s why busy people study there. Now it’s every week another 3-5 activities we’ve got to do. Plus essays and projects. Write 500 words on this or that, post it on your blog (and mess up your online identity) and debate in the forum – where noone will respond to what you say – beyond oh yes, good point – because people are busy ticking all the boxes of this ‘new’ micro-management teaching style. Flow, the kind of immersed happiness that comes with getting deeply into studies, does not kick in. I assume, that is what I miss most and that’s why I am angry. I feel betrayed for the best that learning has to offer.

Flows of learning: In all my disappointment (there are more aspects that make you laugh out loud in disbelief, check my Twitter channel) I noticed I have been fuelled with – supposedly – negative energy and a lack of inspiring and driven debate that poured right into my spinning activities. We spinners in London’s Soho Gym Camden are blessed with a remarkable individual. I have come from weak to outstanding (I get to hear) over the past 10 months and keep having amusing conversations about personal development and informal learning – unexpected, unplanned, all down to someone who is outstanding in his teaching, motivational and observational skills. Our instructor will not break a spinner, but he will yell at us in complete passion ‘fly! fly!’ and we will. He will observe your progress and won’t push you beyond your personal maximum limit but he will get you very close. That’s a rare skill, too many lecturers either don’t challenge you or too much or only in all the wrong aspects.

Informal learning: I have learned an enormous amount from these spinning classes that have made me see skills I possess but never thought I would have. I have became a lot braver, trusting, confident in the unknown – I have started exploring the mental space that is between getting on that bike and the 5th minute after getting the body into a different mode. I develop ideas in a non-intellectual way when I work through the 70th minute on a Sunday morning, the body in ecstatic sweatiness, the mind sharp and ready to tackle whatever may come. I have learned to be in a state of very happy meditation, a state of deep fulfilment, generated by nothing but physical work and focus, focus, focus. Don’t let go! The mantra that wipes out any doubt in the manipulating power an instructor can have over you. Don’t let go! – the same few words Rose got to hear from Jack on the Titanic. You know how far she got after he drowned in the icy sea…(that’s another story though).

Transferable social skills: I have learned to trust an instructor who’s got the power to make or break (and I wasn’t aware of this before) by manipulating us. I have also learned that a good and passionate teacher is not shy of sharing what they do learn from us learners. And they do. In fact they may even discover things in learner they envy as they haven’t had that experience yet. It’s been a rewarding and fantastic journey that has got me to look at learning and teaching even more from a sharing and equality angle. I am less than ever before willing to buy into the assessment-driven micro-management teaching I experience in my university.

Producing docile minds versus the greed for a challenge: Studies that lack enthusiasm and the kind of inspired atmosphere that leaves people happily exhausted are something we all should learn to criticise a lot harsher. Too many have been educated to be docile, to not question the power and hierarchy, the funding politics and institutional agendas embedded in learning practices that protesting for harder student work and more challenges do not seem to come naturally to many students – and I mean qualitative harder studies, not just a mind-numbing quantity of easily assessable tasks. I find this sad, even more so ever since I have been joining these spinning classes which are always fully booked and transform people over an hour into happily exhausted perma-grinners, excited in the experience and keen on coming back and progressing. Fly, fly!

using Google Wave: lots of potential

I got an invite to Google Wave some time back and at the moment about half of my 11 contacts in Wave have engaged in some online collaboration. This was predominantly in 1:1 conversation, so very similar to emailing at this point.

One major exception, though. A wave that started on 6th November, includes in this hour 125 -invited- users (basically by friend’s snow-balling), and discusses the simple question whether Wave will become a success. So, it’s Yes, No or Maybe. Nearly 80 messages and comments have been generated and to me it’s been an excellent way to explore the limited options a little further. Wave Preview is restricted with respect to add- ins and gadgets. Here is a list of Google Wave extensions and Google Wave Robots that we are supposed to be able to use sometime soon (when exactly is still unclear).

Some users within this Wave declared they were getting impatient, this was the main argument people made who thought Wave is not going to be a success. However, this specific wave is managed (so people stay on the topic) and contains some gadgets. New comments are highlighted, in order to trace back when a wave was started and what was said by whom there is a playback menu, which also allows to toggle between frames and lists a full list of participants of a wave.

So far I find it very interesting to see how much speculation there is and how much misconception – this extends to those users who haven’t engaged in the managed wave. It seems the lack of communication provided by Google within Wave feeds into pessimism and the lack of time or curiosity to explore options and play equally nurtures the failure some see on the horizon. Those who are not familiar with editing wikis and collaborating in semi-private online spaces argue they want more privacy and control, others claims it’s boring and some said they would only log in to see whether someone had said something to them (which, I admit, made me instantly think about their real life relationships…).

Wave raises interesting questions as to power and control, censorship and regulation – on the micro-level of the individual user. Some seem to be very comfortable talking to anyone who has posted something worth commenting on. Others remain observers – at least they are still listed as such. Users can unfollow any wave, just like in Twitter. There is an option that allows users to tag a wave, so it’s collective tagging which is fun – and can help looking at discussions from a different angle, depending on the users’ expertise and professional background. Now there is also an option to up-and download a wave or copy it to another wave. The latter option made me wonder whether all comments are recognised by users as not copyrighted. Basically, Wave operates as password-protected area but I doubt every user holds the same authorship ethos – attribution may become an issue.

Wave is fast and operates well in Google Chrome but it seems to cause problems in other browsers. So far it has delivered it key promise: to provide the main features of Twitter, Facebook and Wikis, with a few more options and gadgets, this could become my favourite tool of discussion, in particular in combination with Google Docs.

Workshop: Using Creative Methods in Social Research, Dec 2009

This week, I saw David Gauntlett ’s status update on Facebook linking to the announcement of a 2-day Course on the Use of Creative Methods in Social Research, to be held on 10th and 11th December 2009 at City University in London, supported by the ESRC.

There is a low fee for post-graduate students and a good chance this will turn into a rather interdisciplinary event. I have attended a few workshops and conferences held or organised by David and they have all been not just very valuable but also great fun – so highly recommended to email the form and secure a place, all further details are here.

Conference: Affective fabrics of digital cultures, June 2010

The very interesting looking conference Affective fabrics of digital cultures: feelings,technologies, politics is going to take place on 3-4 June 2010 at the University of Manchester. Plenary speakers are Una Chung (Sarah Lawrence College), Patricia Clough (Queens College, CUNY), Anne-Marie Fortier (Lancaster University), Melissa Gregg (The University of Sydney), Athina Karatzogianni (The University of Hull) and Luciana Parisi (Goldsmith, University of London). Organiser is – adored friend of mine – Adi Kuntsman (RICC, The University of Manchester). Details of the international 2-day conference are available here and below:
Bringing together contributions from the fields of sociology, media and cultural studies, arts, politics and science and technology studies, the conference will engage with the following Qs:

• How does affect work in on-line networks and digital assemblages? What are the affective regimes of on-line sociality?
• What kind of perceptions, sensations, affective movements and public feelings emerge in our highly mediated and digitalised environments?
• What is the cybertouch of war, violence, terror?
• What are the structures of feeling that operate in the digitalised everyday and computerised ordinary?
• How can we theorise psycho-political formations of nation, race, empire, population and generation in the age of digital reproduction, mediated visions and globalised communication technologies?
• How do digital cultures shape our political horizons of fear, anxiety, mourning, hate, hope?

Submission of abstracts for individual papers or round tables are invited, alternative presentation formats are welcome. Abstracts (300 words for individual papers, 500 words for round tables) are due by 1st Feb 2010, candidate notification by 15 Mar 2010. Selected papers will be considered for post-conference publication.

ePortfolios evaluated: an imagined case

The evaluation grid below is based on a comparison between 2 ePortfolio systems I have selected on the EduTools website where further systems can be examined. The user I had in mind while working through the provided result (which has been heavily edited and reduced for my purposes) is a student with a work history who is about completing a first degree which s/he hopes will lead to a career change.

The user believes an ePortfolio accessible to prospective employers will provide an advantage in the current competitive market. S/he also thinks an ePortfolio that is sustainable and flexible may come in handy at a later stage when artefacts will be added in order to highlight CPD (Continued Professional Development). As s/he is playing with the thought to work for some time in sunny Spain s/he also looks for options that take into account different national requirements.

You find the complete PPT below and for download on Slideshare.

Ethical issues in Social Research Projects

This short paper discusses ethical issues as embedded in a TV reality show format that provides the [ill-designed] imagined setting for a social psychology-informed research project looking at group dynamics and performance under stress. The core principles of informed consent, briefing and debriefing, backup, coercion and incentives are applied to the experiment.
You find the PDF below and for download on Slideshare where you can also get a presentation transcript. Creative Commons Licence applies, attribute please. And if you like it: quote, embed – and question it :)

let’s talk money: Funding for disabled students

Below are the findings of a quick research I have undertaken on [additional] financial resources available for disabled students in preparation for an essay which is going to discuss barriers and accessibilities in Higher Education. The differences among nations are considerable when it comes to eligibility for such funding – many funding bodies apply a medical model of disability (as opposed to a charity model or a social model for instance) that excludes multiple or temporary disabilities.

The summary is available on Slideshare.

IR10: Multidisciplinary Internet Research

This year’s annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Internet Research 10.0- Internet: Critical will be held 7-10 October 2009 in Milwaukee, WI, USA. I will be attending the preconference workshop on Multidisciplinary Internet Research which participants were asked to prepare for. The preparation covered a list of [early-stage] research questions, theoretical and methodological frameworks and key literature drawn upon in the reflection on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research design.

The workshop organisers have set up an already quite comprehensive wiki which is available on sociotech.net and contains my summary that is also available on Slideshare where you will be able to find a transcript of the 2-pages PDF. The wiki will be updated in due course, so keep watching if that field interests you.

ePortfolios: useful in web 2.0 times?

The [UK] Assurance Agency (QAA) defines Personal Development Planning (PDP) as

a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development.

Ideally, an ePortfolio would help a range of users to identity and manage learning progress: the learner her/himself, potential colleagues and employers, teachers/lecturers, administrators, course/programme managers in educational institutions. Below I have embedded the discussion which is also available on
Scribd

View this document on Scribd

PDP and ePortfolios: key drivers

Professional Development Planning (PDP) is driven by a range of different reasons which are related to wider pedagogical, technical, and corporate discourses. The Lifelong Learning Agenda has become increasingly dominant and shaped the supportive use of ePortfolios which can provide evidence for skills and achievements. The electronic transfer of such data and increasingly mobile students and employees in a gloablised world are among the push factors recognised in nation’s driving forces at the stage when they started setting up their PDP frameworks. My summary of key drivers for the UK, the USA and Europe is also available for download on Slideshare.